Conceptual Ecology and Invasion Biology: Reciprocal Approaches to Nature [Hardcover]

In this edited volume, global experts in ecology and evolutionary biology explore how theories in ecology elucidate the processes of invasion, while also examining how specific invasions inform ecological theory. This reciprocal benefit is highlighted in a number of scales of organization: population, community and biogeographic. The text describes example invaders in all major groups of organisms and from a number of regions around the globe.

Introduction, history and terminology.- Tracking the tractable: using invasion to guide the exploration of conceptual ecology.- Darwin to Elton: early ecology and the problem of invasive species.- Invasion biology 1958-2005: the pursuit of science and conservation.- Invasiveness in exotic plants: immigration and naturalization in an ecological continuum.- Populations at play.- Density dependence in invasive plants: demography, herbivory, spread and evolution.- Stochasticty, nonlinearity and instability in biological invasions.- Local interactions and invasion dynamics: population growth in space and time.- A guide to calculating discrete-time invasion rates from data.- The role of evolutionary genetiocs in studies of plant invasions.- Unwlcomed visitors: species interactions.- Contact experience, alien-native interactions, and their community consequences: a theoretical consideration on the role of adaptation in biological invasion.- Use of biological invasions and their control to study the dynamics of interacting populations.- Invasibility of seed prdators on synchronized intermittent seed production of host plants.- Invasion and the regulation of plant populations by pathogens.- Exploring the relationship between nichie breadth and invasion success.- Interactions between invasive plants and soil ecosystem: positive feedbacks and their potential to persist.- Invasion biology as a community process: messages from microbial microcosms.- Large-scale consequences and pattern of invasions.- Understanding invasiolăœ